Intercollegiate Leagues

The formation of the college baseball league in which Yale, Dartmouth, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell and Pennsylvania have accepted places has caused some comment on the independent attitude always maintained by Harvard toward associations in intercollegiate sport. Perhaps the commonest interpretation put on this detachment has read into the Harvard athletic policy a disdain of such leagues. "Old high-hat Harvard" is the phrase most often used to describe what is felt to be an independence amounting to conscious self-righteousness.

Against college leagues as such the Harvard Athletic Association has no quarrel. Its reluctance to enter these combinations has been based primarily on a consideration of the academic requirements of the University. The playing of a league schedule involves at least half a dozen trips to opponents' fields in as many weeks. The time consumed in these trips, it is believed, is too great a demand on men whose scholastic duties are pressing them ever more closely.

This purely practical reason has prompted Harvard to remain apart from athletic leagues among the colleges. There may be, it is true, some danger that the necessary activities of the governing body of any such league might come into disturbing contact with the policy of a single college. Where the intra-university program is especially extensive, as at Harvard, the obligation of conforming to the rules of an external organization might be an unfortunate one.

The latest intercollegiate league has been begun with the avowed purpose of re-awakening college interest in baseball. With this effort the Harvard Athletic Association can sympathize. College baseball has been failing lately before the gains made by track, tennis and other outdoor spring sports. Whether or not new life can be given it through the medium of a league of leading colleges playing for a championship is a question of which the attempted solution will be watched with attention. H.A.A. News